A journal of radical thoughts, ideas, musings, and rantings of a square peg adrift in a sea of round holes.

As Heard on The Stephanie Miller Show

Sunday, May 13, 2007

The new Fall Season: 4 to look out 4

Well the new season will be announced this week. And as usual, people are recalling the corpses of this season past. Kidnapped? Kaput. Big Day? Big Bust. Studio 60? 86'ed. No one Jonesed for Smith. One and on we go. Looks like the only way you could have made it this season is if you flew, time-traveled, or wore braces.

So I am looking at the possibilities that maybe offered at this week's upfronts. These stuck out:

Swingtown (CBS): Are you ready for swingers on TV? CBS might think you are ready, though my fear is that this will probably be (A) cleaned-up too much to keep a certain NoNeck at bay and (B) another cautionary tale about what happens when you are honest about your sexuality in this castrated society

Grant Snow, the artist formerly known as Melrose Place Jake, heads the cast of this drama set in the pre-AIDS 70's

K-Ville (Fox): If Fox Entertainment can remember the passion the Fox News reporters Geraldo Rivera and Shepard Smith reported the tragedy that still is New Orleans after Katrina, this may have a life to it. It does have an impressive crew: the showrunner is Jonathan Lisco, who did the same duties for NYPD Blue and The District. Anthony Anderson and Cole Hauser star, with Tawny Cypress commuting between this and Heroes. The show details how NOLA has become the New Wild West, although if I can remember, New Orleans has a pretty high crime rate before the storm hit.

The Sarah Connor Chronicles (Fox): First off, Heroes fans, Zach is not coming back. Esepcially if this hits. A lot of eyes are looking to see if this Terminator continuation will pass muster.

No one involved in movies, except for the executive producers, is involved with the series. No Linda Hamilton. No Edward Furlong. No Kristanna Loken. And we understand Mr. Swartzengger is busy with other projects.

Basically, Sarah(Lena Headly)'s still having nightmares about the coming end-of-world and the Terminator bots. A new terminator has been sent to protect son John. Her name is Cameron (!) and now one knows that she is a T-model. All we know is that the bot is 15, looks a lot like Summer Glau who starred Firefly, and is cute enough to make Thomas Dekker, who plays John, forget about a certain cheerleader he left behind in Texas....or was it NBC?

We'll see.

The (New) Bionic Woman (NBC): How many Heroes can you put on a schedule...as many as can get you from being #4 to a more respectable placement. This is one of those re-imaginings they do to freshen up a franchise. It usually does not bode well.

This time there is no Steve Austin, stone cold or otherwise. Actually, there will be two. Katie Sackhoff (Starbuck on Battlestar Galactica) will play a crazed out Bionic whos nanos drove her nuts. She also drives a semi into a bartneder who just happens to be named Jamie Summers and whos boyfriend just happens to be a doctor in a bionics lab.

You can tell what happens next, she gets the grand prize: new legs, new arm, new eye (not the ear like Lindsay Wagner had).

And British actress Michelle Ryan will have to work her tail off to make us forget Lindsay. In fact, I have a funny feeling that we may all wind up rooting for the Bad Bionic Babe, played by Sackoff.

No word yet on whether either one will be selling Fords during the off-season.